AdDuplex Windows Phone Statistics Report for March 2014

It’s that time of the month again – a time to review what’s changed in the Windows Phone device world over the last 30 (or so) days.

Data source

This report is based on data collected from 3568 Windows Phone apps running AdDuplex SDK v.2. The raw data analyzed was collected over the day of March 18th, 2014 (UTC time) unless otherwise stated. We have made every attempt to consolidate different reported phone model names under their canonical retail model names, but it is possible that some of the rare model name variations were not accounted for.

Worldwide stats

There’s quite some movement in the top-10 of most popular Windows Phones worldwide. Not at the very top though. Lumia 520 is still the king and growing (+1.5% since last month). Lumia 620 has finally reached the second spot moving the leader of not so distant past (Lumia 920) one more step down to number 3. Lumia 625 is the newest phone to move steadily up and it switched places with 720 this month to claim the 4th spot. And, finally, US-only Lumia 521 is now at #7 (was #9).

Where are the newer flagships? Lumia 1020 is at number 15, L1520 at 20, L1320 at 23 and Lumia Icon is number 38 among all Windows Phones in use (including WP7 devices).

While we hear the news about new manufacturers joining “Team Windows Phone” and we see a new Samsung for Verizon in our logs more often than ever, it’s still Nokia who actually releases new devices into the market. So, it’s not a surprise that Nokia’s share of the pie has grown again – 93.5% vs. 92.6% last month.

As for WP8 vs. WP7, the younger sibling continued to grow, but at a pretty slow pace (+0.5%):

And if we look deeper into the OS version, we’ll see that almost 47% of WP8 devices out there are now sporting Update 3 of the OS. Big progress since we last looked at it in January, but still more than half of the phones are not on the latest version.

United States

It’s official – it’s no longer “developing countries” where Windows Phone is strongest on the low end. Lumia 521 and 520 combined now own more than half of WP market in the US. That’s +11.6% in a month, or more L52x added in a month than there are L920 and L928 combined overall. And the explanation to this is in the carrier chart:

Once number 1 WP8 carrier Verizon is no longer at the top. It is not second and not even third. MetroPCS is now at number 3. We’ll see, if Lumia Icon and, possibly, a new Verizon-exclusive flagman from Samsung are able to reverse the situation next month.

Greece

Last month we did an “Olympic edition” of the report, but forgot to include the birthplace of the whole movement. We are correcting the omission this month. And not surprisingly we see a Lumia 520 at the top with 1/3 of all the Windows Phones in use. That said, we see Lumia 610 at number 2 and that could be interpreted as either L610 was a big hit there, or, more likely and unfortunately, WP8 didn’t take Greece by storm.

France

The trend we have seen in France 2 months ago is still on track – Lumia 520 and 625 are growing, everything else is shrinking or stale. The only minor exception is Lumia 925, which gained 0.7% over the period.

Poland

Last time we’ve covered Poland was in December 2013. Lumia 625 moved from the sixth position to number 2 since then. No other significant changes.

India

Once the most vibrant Windows Phone market, India’s numbers look pretty much exactly the same as they looked back in January. The only important change is that Lumia 525 went from nowhere straight to #5 with 4.5% market share.

Ukraine

Ukraine is all over the news these days and it’s been a while since we have covered the country. Surprisingly it’s not that difficult to compare things to the way they were almost a year ago. While Lumia 520 wasn’t even out back then and it’s no surprise it is at the top of the chart, the leaders of the last season (Lumia 710 and 800) are still at the second and third spot. Lumia 720 has raised to number 4 and Lumia 925 is #8.

Malaysia

Another country in the news is Malaysia and I don’t think we have ever covered it. The top of the chart looks pretty similar to many other countries, but the standout data point is that this is the first country we’ve covered so far with Lumia 1520 in the top ten.

Unreleased phones

We’ve seen more of the still-to-be-released phones we have covered before – like that higher end Verizon Samsung (supposedly called ATIV SE). But then there are a few samples we haven’t covered. Let’s take a look:

· Nokia RM-976, 977, 978, 979 – these have been reported as the successor in the Lumia 6xx line. From our side we can add that they are running Windows Phone 8.1 and have an odd screen resolution of 854×480. If our data is correct, this most likely means on-screen “hardware” buttons.

· Nokia RM-1010 – this one is pretty rare and seen almost exclusively in China. Again, WP 8.1 and that odd 854×480 screen resolution.

About AdDuplex

AdDuplex is the largest cross-promotion network for Windows Phone and Windows 8 apps empowering developers and publishers to promote their apps for free by helping each other. AdDuplex was established in January 2011 in Vilnius, Lithuania. As of March 2014, more than 7,000 apps actively use AdDuplex to gain more visibility.